302 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



pasture-land is being gradually laid under the plough, 

 and the fencing has not decreased in severity since 

 the days when that splendid horseman, Si/James 

 Musgrave (the owner of those two peerless fifteen- 

 three greys, which he scarcely knew from each other), 

 used to declare that he never rode at one of its fences, 

 however big, that, feeling sure of getting over it, he 

 was deceived. Those on the road who watched Mr. 

 Richard Sutton leading the field on Brandy-Face, 

 from Vowes Gorse to Stoke End, with even more 

 than his usual power, over the terrific Keythorpe 

 country two seasons ago, can make affidavits by the 

 dozen about fences which they dare not look at on 

 their own account; while Wartnaby's farm, near 

 Clipston, with its spiked gates and mortised rails, 

 still exists to take the conceit out of the present and 

 the rising generation, and ' c pound " them, as he did 

 their fathers before them. " They're all welcome to 

 ride over it if they can/ 5 was its late owner's boast ; 

 and he always maintained that " There never were 

 but two men fit to come out hunting Lord Alvanley 

 and ' Gumley Wilson' they were the only men that 

 ever rode straight across my farm." 



Half-bred Arabs are often very clever Li the hunt- 

 ing field. They are generally very enduring horses, 

 but with lumpy shoulders, and too fond of going 

 with their heads and tails up. Still Mr. Child, of 

 Kinlet, could beat almost everything across Leices- 

 tershire on one of them, by Lord dive's Arabian, in 

 Mr. MeynelFs day. Mr. Charles Davis' s grey horse 

 Hermit, whom he still considers the stoutest and 

 best hunter he ever had, was by an English horse out 

 of an Arabian mare, which was hardly so handsome 

 or so good. Many would have it that Hermit was 

 out of a Trumpator mare, while others equally stoutly 

 asserted that he had a more martial origin, and was 

 out of a trumpeter's mare ! His real history is on 

 thiswise. Mr. Gates, who lived at " The Hermitage/ 7 



